But as capitalism exhausts the posibilities for primitive acumulation at the expense of pre-capitalist and intermediate social formations, so it has to look elsewhere for fresh sources of labour power. In the end, it has only one place to go. It has to canibalize itself. Some capitalists – chiefly via the credit system but also through patterns of tied sub-contracting to larger firms or dependency upon monopoly sources of supply. Others are forced into the proletariat directly, sometimes on a part-time and sometimes on a full-time basis, through heightened competition and bankruptcy. Other layers within the bourgeoisie likewise lose their former independence and become mere wage labourers albeit within a finely graded hierarchical system.

To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of Society. For the alleged commodity ‘labour power’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of man’s labour power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime and starvation.

Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts In primitive Society.

We used to read predictions that by 2000 everyone would work 30-hour weeks, and the rest would be leisure. But as we approach 2000 it seems more likely that half of us will be working 60 hour weeks and the rest of us will be unemployed.

— Bridges, W. (1994). The end of the job. Fortune, September 19, 1994, pp. 62-74.